Getting your website ready

The healthcare sector is one of the fastest-paced market sectors today. Today’s consumers are searching for pharmaceutical goods online and comparing providers with the help of websites, reviews, and other information on the Internet. 

According to the Prophet statistics, about 81% of customers are not satisfied with their healthcare experience. That is why modern medical business representatives should improve patient interactions (appointment tracking, communication, etc.).

Both selling pharmaceutical goods and medical consulting require a user-friendly digital platform and CRM for better business performance. But before integrating the customer relationship management technology, it is important to undertake a comprehensive analytical investigation. This approach is not only about setting objectives but also about analyzing existing websites.

Image source: Medgadget

Healthcare CRM integration requires a detailed website audit to determine the weaknesses and strengths beforehand. The redesign of the medical site should come first to launch a healthcare-driven digital marketing campaign faster and more efficiently. Customer relationship management software should be integrated to complement the well-performing website with automation, patient feedback, and tailored surveys.

Why Do You Need Website Audit Before Healthcare CRM Integration?

Most marketers think of CRM implementation as a house extension. Your website is the main construction site, while the customer relationship management software is the finishing building. That is why your house (website) should be firm and durable. Remember that integration of healthcare CRM requires numerous simultaneous processes for the setup and launch. Among the core ones are:

• Website audit;
• SEO assessment;
• User journey mapping and customization;
• Conversion rate analysis and improvements.

Together with the primary processes listed above, other marketing and tech configurations make the CRM integration less confusing and free of tricky moments. The website redesign and improvements based on the audit, SEO, and conversion rate assessment, together with customer journey mapping, guarantee the best performance and enhance CRM functionality:

• Lead tracking;
• Strategic function planning;
• Email marketing and email campaign processing;
• Opportunity and contact management;
• Dashboard and chart management.

To sum up, the website audit must prepare the digital medical platform to implement healthcare CRM. This way, the representatives of the pharmaceutical business and medical consulting organizations will deliver high-quality care and streamline the patients’ online experience through data automation and improved relationships with the consumers. Additionally, the customer relationship management software will distribute informational triggers and personalized content faster and more efficiently.

Image source: ScienceSoft

Here is a guideline on how to check your website and make CRM solutions adaptive to the healthcare digital marketing approach of the company and business processes of the pharmaceutical, dental, or another medical-grade project.

1 – Website Health & Technical Assessment

To simplify the workflow and refine customer management with the help of medical CRM, your website should obtain the perfect tech parameters. This way, you will cut down expenditures and get essential data for healthcare marketing purposes. Check your website’s health and technical items beforehand.

Website Architecture

The simplicity of the site is key to good usability. That is why the architecture of the healthcare website should be well-thought-out and navigation-friendly. Let’s take a look at the most effective tactics in the context of healthcare digital platforms and their layouts. For example, the top panel (menu) should not be overloaded with sections and categories. It is better to focus on 5-6 main pages.

Image source: GRS

Pay attention to the menu items as well. The navigation should be of the highest level. Therefore, limit your dropdown menus and add a search function (the open form of the search box).

Image source: The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

Some other approaches for website architecture improvement are:

• Wizard back-and-forth navigation;
• Grouped on-page information;

• Easily scannable and catchy;

• Visible contact information for increased conversion.

Image source: Huntingdale Dental Clinic

Usability

Pay attention to the website’s usability to make the patient experience seamless and improve communication (interaction). Take into account the potential consumer location and provide prices in the currency of the client’s region. Avoid hidden fees that will ruin the patients’ loyalty to the healthcare company.

Image source: GRS

Be sure that the registration process is not complicated. All the imagery should complement the content of the website. Use CTAs and personalized invitations like “Hello, username!”, “How can we help you, username!”. Check the relevancy of all the references and do away with any broken links. Additionally, the following tactics can come in handy for better usability of the healthcare website:

1. Add confirmation buttons to keep track of on-page activities (confirm/delete/etc.).
2. Create content and popups that are focused on user feedback.
3. Use flash messages to increase interaction patterns with the audience.
4. Check the compatibility of the medical site with different browsers.
5. Be sure that your website is mobile-friendly.

Do not forget about the health of the website, which also matters for usability. Any tech errors can harm the user-friendliness and online performance of any ambulatory, medical consulting, or inpatient service. Do away with error messages, add only clickable buttons and links, and improve the search options to avoid poor navigation via the search box.

Image source: NYC Health + Hospitals

Website Speed

Healthcare CRM is the e-commerce customer relationship management software used to manage leads, get more sales, boost cross-selling, improve user retention, and even search website ranking. But all these perks are impossible if both medical and commercial websites load pages very slowly. Additionally, poor website speed can harm the indexation of the digital platform, so that healthcare SEO can be affected by slow page speed.

It is necessary to increase page speed for better UX and lower bounce rate as well. For this purpose, a range of practices are recommended:

• Initiate file compression to make large CSS, JavaScript, and other items compact;
• Remove third-party scripts, minimize JS or defer it;
• Use a browser cache for faster content loading;
• Upgrade the web host — the better hosting is, the shorter load times;
• Add next-gen images or other UI elements to catch visitors’ attention;
• Optimize your HTML code (delete any useless symbols, comas, and other elements);
• Cut down redirects to avoid the long HTTP-driven cycle for browsing pages;
• Pay attention to browse caching that can harm your page speed;
• Optimize any imagery and server response time.

With an improved website speed, the implemented CRM will bring better results with the data automation and key information transformations of the existing healthcare site. It is a common misconception that customer relationship management cannot get benefits for search engine optimization. Healthcare can improve SEO ranking significantly.

Website Security

It is essential to pay attention to regulatory compliance and data security to avoid violations and loss of personal information. Each healthcare organization should monitor data usage activity and manage user access on the website. To improve the security level of the digital medical platform:

• Add HTTPS and SSL certificates.
• Keep track of the users’ passwords.
• Select only reliable web hosting services.
• Back up your website to keep it safe.
• Add security headers (CSP, CORP, COOP, etc.) to protect the website against cyber-attacks.
• Check your configuration files to avoid cyber hackers.
• Use WAF to ensure a secure connection between the website and the server.

Do not forget about the safety of your customer relationship management software. It is recommended to select only a trustworthy CRM provider for healthcare sites. This way, you will improve your customer service and establish the reputation of your medical company through enhanced security measures.

Responsive Design

Responsive design is a great way to improve not only the usability of the website but SEO ranking as well. Besides the improved navigation and optimized images we mentioned earlier, you need to test the mobile-friendliness of your site design. Use Screenfly or MobileTest.me together with the Google mobile-friendly test. Take into consideration a range of tactics for responsive web design implementation:

1. Check your share buttons – they should not block any content when it comes to the pocket-screen sessions.
2. Choose a minimalist design to deliver easy-to-understand marketing messages and information about products and services.
3. Emphasize micro-interactions for quick feedback (quote forms, surveys, etc.).
4. Use only click-friendly buttons on the smaller screens and keyboard triggers in online questionnaires/forms.
5. Try the Mobile-First approach for your healthcare website to improve your mobile version and rank higher with search engines.

Image source: Michael Cawcutt

Note that it is better to start any configurations with a comprehensive analysis. Know your audience and research how many website visitors use pocket screens for interaction with your medical site. The more people require a mobile-friendly website, the bigger the emphasis should be on the mobile version of the website and its responsive design.

Structured Data and Snippets

All the reputable healthcare websites that use structured data have an opportunity to reach rich snippets and hit the search results. For digital medical platforms, it is recommended to add the following information for content and site ranking improvements:

• Images with alternative text (this rule works for any websites, including medical ones);
• Opening hours of the physical healthcare establishment;
• Medical event times (schedule of personal consulting, vaccination events, conferences, webinars, etc.);
• Pricing & fees (product and service costs, discounts, special offers, etc.);
• Step-by-step tutorials and instructions.

Image source: Google search screenshot

Crawling and Indexation

To understand how the search engine robots crawl, index, and rank your healthcare website, the following issues should be diagnosed:

• Crawlability (Robots.txt and XML Sitemap);
• Indexability (Page Duplication & Canonical Tags, Page Load Speed, Internal Links, poor redirects & server errors).

This way, you will improve your website structure (detecting featured pages without linking to/from, etc.), internal link structure, redirects, and server-driven parameters.  

2 – Patient’s Journey Assessment

Remember that keyword research and optimization should be driven by customer intent. That is why you need to analyze your patients’ journey before implementing user-friendly CRM software solutions. For this purpose, it is recommended to focus on the Google Analytics and Hotjar tools.

Google Analytics is used to record any data generated from the healthcare website. Bounce rates, drop-off showings, conversion, and other parameters are tracked to provide a detailed picture of the customer journey. You can get information about traffic sources, location, most often visited pages, etc.

Image source: Google Analytics dashboard

This way, Google Analytics is helpful for:

• Comparison of different traffic channels, including paid advertising, social media, and organic traffic.
• Determining the drop-off rates on any pages of the website and high-traffic sections.
• Analyzing the conversion rates, including the geolocation and other criteria of leads who convert into paying consumers.

Monitor the most profitable services and goods for the medical business according to the return rates and purchase/order/booking statistics.

Nevertheless, there are some features available only in Hotjar relating to the patient’s journey. For example, Google Analytics does not explain why people leave certain pages (bounce rates) or visitors’ thoughts about your landing page or other website sections.

Hotjar aims to show all the frustrations people face when it comes to their interaction with the healthcare site. For example, heatmaps demonstrate on-page elements of the highest and lowest interest to patients. Session recordings are useful for keeping track of the customer journey in real-time mode (scrolls, mouse cursor, clicks, drop-offs, etc.).

Image source: Hotjar tutorial screenshot

This way, Hotjar is optimal for assessing the patient’s journey. It uncovers problems and issues in the customer journey and collects direct feedback from the healthcare website audience about their experience.

Medical WordPress sites can also be improved with the help of special-purpose plugins. They are focused on customer feedback and surveys. These plugins can enhance the patient’s journey due to the direct reviews from real website visitors. Choose  one to understand the customer better and create more useful content:

1. YOP Poll is a reputable WP survey-maker with basic templates and an exclusive option of running multiple questionnaires simultaneously.
2. Modal Survey – complement your healthcare CRM with the on-page survey provided by this plugin. Polls and quizzes are also available to get more accurate answers from the audience.
3. CrowdSignal – the WordPress plugin with the option of interactive surveys via emails. Additionally, questionnaires can be placed on healthcare websites.

3 – SEO Assessment

It is worth noting that healthcare websites should meet the E-A-T (expertise, authority, trustworthiness) and YMYL (your money, your life) signals. Medical consulting and selling pharmaceutical products is about people’s life, health, and prosperity. So, Internet searchers will keep away from low-quality content and suspicious pages.

Search engines rank high websites with a focus on E-A-T and YMYL signals. That is why expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are mandatory for high-grade healthcare content. Readers should feel that you care about their health, living conditions, stability, and safety. That is why safety and health are among the main topics of the YMYL pages. Be sure that your content on the healthcare website is of the highest E-A-T and YMYL level.

It is important to optimize relevant keywords for better SEO performance. The search engines should rank pharmaceutical, medical consult, and other healthcare online projects for long-lasting success and competition in voice search. To do this, review your keyword performance with the help of special-purpose services. For example, SE Ranking offers a keyword rank tracker and keyword research tool to check website position for a keyword. This SEO tool allows comprehensive research and defining which key phrases give the biggest gains in traffic and leads. The main idea is to analyze the keyword position according to different aspects. The SE Ranking offers to track the following showings:

• search volume;
• search visibility;
• SERP features;
• average position;
• traffic forecast;
• keyword dynamics;
• detected URLs for a certain keyword (cannibalization risk if several URLs are for one key phrase);
• comparison to competitors’ keywords.

Besides data on organic ranking according to the specified keywords, it is possible to get insights on search results, ad positions, and SERP features (snippets, videos, and so on).

Image source: SE Ranking dashboard

Additionally, the keyword position checker helps to analyze the competitiveness according to the key phrase. It is possible to add up to 20 competitors, report their rankings, and compare this data with yours.

• Among other helpful features for better SEO website performance are:
• Determination of the competitors with the best SEO visibility rating;
• Getting insights about top 100 search results for ongoing SEO improvements;
• Analyzing top 100 search positions and dynamics of the websites taken into consideration.
• Defining the most successful performers in the medical niche according to the keywords and search results.

The enhanced monitoring and analytical options will allow you to determine the most efficient keywords according to their frequency, traffic potential, complexity, and other criteria.

Content Quality Review

You need to analyze the quality of your on-page content, which includes checking the relevancy of keywords and texts on the website. Note that healthcare projects have specific terms, services, and products to describe and promote.

It is essential not to neglect the content audit to bring the customer-driven presentation of all the key information and further conversions. Some of the best practices in the context of healthcare content quality review are:

1. Deliver accurate and well-thought-out content. Do not add complicated texts. Write everything in plain words. Avoid outdated content (old blog texts without updates, wrong pricing, etc.).

Image source: ReferralMD

1. Be sure that your content is SEO-friendly. Use optimized key phrases that will become the perfect conduit for connecting potential customers with your website. But do not forget about other hacks to make your content optimized for search (keyword-optimized titles, descriptions, alternative texts for images, lists, text structuring, etc.).
2. Keep track of how patients interact with your content. Make action buttons easy to find, and use bold formatting and other fonts to highlight essential information. Contact information and notifications about special offers should be seen first.

Image source: Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

1. Monitor the results your content brings. Track what texts and on-page blocks are the most click-friendly. Determine the content that does not arouse the interest of readers. Make changes and monitor the results of your updates. Use Google Analytics and Hotjar, different plugins, and other software to get an accurate analytical background.
2. Define what configurations your healthcare website requires. Plan all the improvements so as not to miss any detail. Healthcare CRM implementation should take place only when you are sure that your content is user-friendly and high-converting.

Basic On-Page SEO

Do not forget that even a market sector like the healthcare industry needs SEO tactics and hacks as any e-commerce or corporate website. Pay attention to the search engine optimization practices that will bring you high SERPs and more traffic, and:

• Make your URLs SEO-friendly. Add main-target keywords to the reference of the website. Make sure that your URLs are short.

• Add the top keyword to the title and use the main key phrase in the first 150 symbols of your content.
• Optimize your H1, H2, H3 tags with keywords. Add alternative keyword-rich text to images.
• Add synonyms and LSI words to stuff your website with keyword-related terms to avoid keyword stuffing and spammy content that is thought of as manipulating the healthcare site’s ranking.
• Write SEO-friendly descriptions. They should be 155-160 symbols and contain at least 1-2 keywords. Make descriptions as catchy as other meta tags to catch searchers’ attention.

4 – Conversion Rate Assessment

This is like the final touch of the pre-implementation process for healthcare CRM. Add the most efficient CTAs, marketing offers, pop-ups, online forms, and other dynamic elements to the website. It will allow you to improve the overall performance of your online medical project. This way, you will get more converting leads and click-friendly landing pages.

Note that conversion, traffic, and other marketing results should be compared right after the launch of your CRM. Monitor and analyze parameters regularly to track the performance of your website with implemented customer relationship management software and initiate conversion-driven configurations.

Final Word

Remember that healthcare CRM implementation requires website audits to bring faster and more efficient results in the context of traffic, conversions, and SEO performance. It is recommended to decide on the type of customer relationship management software beforehand. If your CRM needs are driven by customer experience, it is best to implement collaborative software. In case you are interested in deep data analysis, it is more suitable to choose analytical software. The operational CRM will come in handy for the marketing and automation of business processes.

With pre-implementation practices like healthcare website auditing, you need to employ a range of tactics after implementation. Post-implementation tactics include following a build-measure-learn cycle of the software, gathering feedback, and reviewing CRM performance together with the medical website showings.